Knife crime 'much worse' in last five years, 80 per cent of police officers say

Knife crime has got worse in the last five years according to eight out of ten
police officers, a think-tank report has found.

Its findings are in stark contrast with the British Crime Survey, which states that the level of knife crime has remained stable in recent years.

However, those figures are misleading and bear no relation to what is being experienced by people and police forces across the UK, according to think-tank Policy Exchange, which published the new report.

Jonathan McClory, one of the report's authors, said: "We polled 1,200 police constables and they've all said that gun and knife crime is much worse than official statistics are saying.

"We need to look at the long-term trends not the year-on-year trends. It's quite easy to manipulate year-on-year shifts which is I think what the Home Office have done".

One of the weaknesses in the method of collating knife crime figures highlighted by the Policy Exchange report is that under-16s are not included in the British Crime Survey. The latest hospital admission figures show that the number of children under 16 being treated for knife wounds has increased by 62 per cent in the last five years.